VENERABLE: With 15-plus years under their belts, the Unseen are the longest-lived winners in this year’s local poll.

We have seen the face of Boston rock and roll, and it’s got painted-on eyebrows. What sort of deep, meaningful conclusions about Boston 2007 can we draw from the results of this year’s Best Music Poll? For starters, you folks really like the Dresden Dolls. Thank you, and good night.

In fact, this year’s results say a lot about how one band — or to be fair, two bands — can capture a city’s love and imagination. For much of this millennium, the two boundaries of Boston rock have been claimed by two bands, with the Dresden Dolls representing the edgier side and the Dropkick Murphys the rowdier one. Neither band had any serious challenge to its throne this year: the Dropkicks were kicked upstairs to the national poll, where they topped the punk category with more than twice the votes of anyone else. The Dolls remained in the local poll (for the last time, I’d wager), where they managed the cleanest sweep in its history. Not only did they win virtually every category in which they qualified, they placed in a few where they don’t: They got a few votes as Best Punk Act, ten as Best World Act. Three people even thought they were the best blues band in town.

And really, who deserves it more? The standard putdown of the Dresden Dolls — that they’re artsy types with nothing to do with rock and roll — just doesn’t apply anymore, as the tougher stance on their sophomore album, Yes, Virginia (Roadrunner), makes clear. In fact, they’re the most aggressive guitar-free band to come out of Boston since Birdsongs of the Mesozoic; and I’ve witnessed the rude shock experienced by people who’ve seen Palmer sit down at the piano and expected her to sound like Tori Amos. Throwing a subversive spin on issues both social and sexual, her songs are arguably as “punk” as any of the working-class anthems put out by the Dropkicks. Besides, art and punk have coexisted comfortably in Boston ever since the Velvet Underground played the Tea Party.

But the proverbial road never runs smooth, and Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione haven’t necessarily had the most enviable year. They had a moment of triumph just in time for last year’s poll, commandeering the Orpheum for the release party of Yes, Virginia—never before has that theater looked so colorful. But summer brought a tour with Panic! At the Disco, whose teenybopper fans didn’t always take kindly to the Dolls. Last winter, The Onion Cellar, Palmer’s collaboration with the American Repertory Theatre, proved a star-crossed project with its 11th-hour rewrites, though they ultimately carried it off to great success. At the moment, Palmer and Viglione are taking their first major break from each other; she’s making a solo album in Nashville with Ben Folds producing; he’s touring with Humanwine (the pair will reunite this summer as part of the gay-themed True Colors tour). Time will tell if they’re winding down as a duo or just recharging.

A talk with legendary producer and musician Martin Bisi Since opening BC Studio in Brooklyn in 1979, Martin Bisi has recorded dozens of records on the fringe of the avant-garde scene, including early Sonic Youth, Michael Gira's Swans and Angels of Light, and the cabaret breakout debut record from Boston's Dresden Dolls.

Amanda Palmer lets go of all restrictions Just when hemming and hawing about the future of money in music had grown dreadfully redundant, leave it to Amanda Palmer to resurrect the dead horse and prompt the American square community to ask, "What the fuck is Kickstarter, who the fuck is this frequently naked lady with painted-on eyebrows, and why did the Internet send her a million dollars to record an album?"

Bang Camaro fight the business of rock It was January 6, 2009, on the set of The Late Show down in New York City, and Conan O'Brien just couldn't shut up about Bang Camaro. Even the normally stoic Max Weinberg admitted to being a fan.

Friends of E Last month, Central Square hosted a memorial party for the late Billy Ruane, who at 52 years old, pretty much everyone agreed, had lived a full, rich life. This Saturday, T.T. the Bear’s is once again the site of a show in someone’s memory.

Players only Jessica Smith has spent years booking death-metal shows around Boston. On top of loads of meat-and-potatoes nights at O'Brien's in Allston and Dee Dee's in Quincy, two of her shows — Origin and Malevolent Creation — actually sold out the Middle East upstairs.

Rock in a hard place That little twang of cognitive dissonance you feel in your brain when someone refers to a “Boston rock scene” is perfectly normal.

Rock-and-roll circus “We’ll fuck up a lot, that’s just the way it is,” said the evening’s MC/entertainer, Sxip Shirey, adding that everyone in the crowd should “feel free to fart.”

WALTER SICKERT LEADS A BAND OF MUSICAL MISFITS | February 05, 2011 When Walter Sickert and his Army of Broken Toys played an official First Night show at the Hynes Auditorium on New Year's Eve, they ran overtime and the soundman pulled the plug — which isn't quite the smartest way of shutting down an acoustic band.

REVIEW: ROCK OF AGES | October 12, 2010 At the start of the hair-metal musical Rock of Ages (at the Colonial Theatre through October 17), narrator Lonny (Patrick Lewallen) promises a night of sexy decadence and general kick-assery.